Busy weekend! Saturday attended Literary Orange Writers Conference at UC, Irvine. It was my first time going;great conference. The panels I attended were the best–full of energy and talk. I even took a few notes at each one. I bought books of course, got autographs, and had the pleasure of meeting and chatting a little with some of my favorite writers. Picked up OC Noir, edited by Gary Phillips with stories by two of my writer friends, The Knights of the Cornerstone by James Blaylock, The Age of Dreaming by Nina Revoyr (new to me), and discovered a new urban fantasy writer, Justine Musk–bought Lord of Bones, ’cause her first one, Bloodangel, sold out. The TBR stack grows like that wall of roses in Sleeping Beauty.
Sunday, despite the sickly sky threatening rain, I took the long drive to LACMA to view the Renoir exhibit. Among the paintings, about 20, I think, my favorites were Gabrielle with a Rose, 1911 and Girls at the Piano, and there was one other but can’t recall its title now. While I enjoy Renoir and I think there’s a Pissarro or two that I like too, the Impressonists are not among my favorites, those dots and spiky brush strokes make my eyes ache. Renoir eventually turned his brush to capture a more formal realism and a seductive sensuality in his art, although there were a few of his from his earlier days working in the classic Impressionist style. All in all, it was a lovely exhibit, but my heart still belongs to the earlier, much earlier, Pre-Raphaelites. And oh, thanks to Renoir’s alluring technique, I now have a new phrase to describe an arrangement of roses, the next time I need one.
Meanwhile, the anthology with my story, Ghost of Roses , continues to receive good reviews, and little ol’ me has received a couple of nice mentions too! And did I mention the And Now the Nightmare Begins made the long list for Best Magazine of the British Fantasy Society’s nominations? It did!
